Maurice Kenny: Celebrations of a Mohawk Writer

1. Reading the Wampum: An Introduction to the Works of Maurice Kenny

xi FOREWORD xi “We should go back,” Carol suggested. But Maurice was already out the door. “I’ll walk from here,” he said. The last we saw of him (what we thought might in fact be the last that anyone saw of him!) was his determined back bent over as he disappeared in the swirling snow. But Maurice survived. Yet again. I won’t go into this in detail, but I do not know of any poet who has had more close calls with mortality than Maurice. At one point, whenever I called him I found myself on the verge of starting every conversation with the questions, “So, what did you almost die of this time, Maurice?” Like his beloved cats, Maurice truly seems to have the proverbial nine lives. I do not mean that in merely a joking way. Similar to some of the characters in our old tales, Maurice has gone through many changes in his life—while always remaining steadfastly focused on the literary life, his devotion to Iroquois history and heritage, and American Indian writing as a whole. Maurice would move on from being an urban poet and publisher to the life of a successful and popular North Country college professor in far upstate New York. His students at North Country Community College (NCCC) and Paul Smith’s College would find themselves as much in awe of his ability as a teacher of creative writing and literature as his audiences all around the country had been at his bardic brilliance behind a podium. He also moved on from being a writer of lyric poetry to be the creator of great dramatic cycles around the lives the Jesuit priest Isaac Jogues and the powerful Mohawk woman leader Molly Brant. While continuing to be a prolific poet, he proved himself in further literary forms as an often anthologized writer of short stories, an insightful essayist. And he never forgot the responsibility of serving the community. While Maurice was at NCCC a group of us—in which Maurice often was the first among equals—began to work to bring together what turned out to be a truly amazing major gathering of American Indian writers. Despite the fact that we had the support of Richard Margolies, a visionary social writer whose too brief life was devoted to the cause of equality, and the initial backing of The Bay Foundation, we still were far short of the support needed to pull it off. Many thought that it was an impossible task. But not Maurice, who arranged for NCCC to host our first major planning meeting and was as energetic in support of our quest as the Energizer Rabbit! That we were able to bring together more than three hundred American Indian writers in Norman, Oklahoma in July 1992, many of them at the start of their careers, and subsidize their travel, food and lodging for the event, was nothing short of a miracle. And there was no one who deserved more credit for its success than Maurice. xii FOREWORD There are so many more stories I could relate about Maurice. I’m not alone in that. I’m sure that virtually everyone he published, everyone who published him, everyone who shared a stage with him or heard him read has at least one memorable Maurice Kenny story. Not all of them may be pleasant. Kind as he is, Maurice has never suffered fools gladly. There can be iron as well as irony in his voice. He’s never been afraid to speak truth to power, to put his life on the line. It is good that there is much more about Maurice Kenny and his work in the pages that follow these peripatetic musings of mine. They do some justice to him, to what I see as a lasting human and literary legacy. What would be best of all, what I wish could be preserved through the ages, is Maurice himself. But I suppose his writing and the writing about him and the recordings of his presentations will have to be enough. May our grandchildren know him. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to the many individuals who made the publication of this book possible . Thanks to Cheryl Savageau, Siobhan Senier, and Lisa Brooks for their encouragement to pursue this project in its earliest stages and for their sage advice regarding the endeavor as a whole. Thanks to the Haudenosaunee scholars, writers, artists...